


Salude

by tb_ll57



Category: Gundam Wing
Genre: Future Fic, M/M, post - endless waltz
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-07
Updated: 2014-03-07
Packaged: 2018-01-14 21:03:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,021
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1278718
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tb_ll57/pseuds/tb_ll57
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>True happiness is to understand our duty to God and man; to enjoy the present, without anxious dependence on the future; not to amuse ourselves with either hopes or fears, but to rest satisfied with what we have, which is abundantly sufficient.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Salude

When Duo starts at Preventers, he's reminded rather strongly of his brief stint in a Federation-sponsored school. There's a certain stern earnestness permeating the very walls. People walk with their shoulders back and their chins up. No-one jokes. They frown when Duo smiles. He gets the notion he's supposed to comport himself with Purpose and Solemnity. It's rather cowing, actually.

He spends his first month reminding himself to keep his head down, keep as small as possible. He spends his next month hating it. He lays in bed each morning, awake an hour before his alarm, staring up at the ceiling and walking himself through all the reasons he has for getting up.

Nothing left on L2.

Nothing left anywhere.

He always hits snooze. He gets up before it goes off again. He irons his shirt, ties his tie, laces his shoes. He parks in his parking slot on the fourth level of the garage, takes the lift every morning with the balding man whose name he never knows, shows his badge to the guard who never seems to remember him either. He walks all the way to the end of the East Wing and climbs the stairs two storeys to his office. It's all window walls, and everything feels too open, too claustrophobic. His cubicle faces out. No-one would dare look in, though. They all walk briskly by, stare strictly straight ahead.

Since no-one's ever watching, he plays Solitaire all day and lets his paperwork pile up in his inbox.

 

**

 

'Do you always have to be chewing?' Merquise asks him.

Duo swallows immediately, pure reflex, like curling his hands away from the ruler he's sure is about to rap his knuckles. 'It's just gum,' he says.

They're watching the new batch of recruits run the training field. They'd made Duo test on it, when he'd hired on. It was a ridiculous contraption, all mud pits and wall climbs and jump pits. Considering they'd hired him to pilot mobile suits, he hadn't much seen the point of going commando for hijinks. Lucy Noin had reported him for saying so.

'And you always have to be chewing gum?'

'It helps me think.'

'Smacking and popping bubbles helps you think?'

His face feels hot. 'It's just gum.'

Merquise turns back to the field. Duo carefully unwraps a new piece, and closes his lips around it.

 

**

 

There are endless meetings. They schedule them months in advance, and he learns to set up computer alerts, or he forgets. He's never asked to contribute-- though they seem to expect he volunteer himself. There are dozens of committees. There's a committee for the morning breakfast platter in the common room, even. That's the one Duo joins. He has to buy coffee twice a month. Out of pocket.

He goes to a weekly one on Tuesday morning, arriving later than everyone even though he's still five minutes early. All the seats in the front are taken. He sits in the back, where he can prop his feet up. Wufei is one of the ones in the front. He frowns back at Duo. Duo puts his feet down.

His supervisor calls them to order and stands at the podium, though there's only twenty of them in the room, and sets her notes before her. 'Please follow along with your agendas,' she instructed. 'We'll begin with Item One, Policy Changes Regarding Inter-Agency Agreements That Cross Fiscal Years.'

Duo doesn't hear a word after that. He counts the cracks between ceiling tiles. He already knows he'll count to one thousand eight hundred seventy four before the meeting will end, precisely an hour after it began.

He only notices the interruption because of the deadly silence that plunges like a suit falling into a gravity well. Merquise has just come in. Fourteen minutes late.

'Forgive me,' Merquise tells the room. 'I was delayed.'

Duo's supervisor glowers. 'Please be seated, Agent Wind.'

Merquise eases into the seat beside Duo. Duo eyes him from the corner of his eyes. Merquise is all smooth expression. There aren't even any lines on his face. He's a literal blank slate. A statue.

His tile count is gone. It's disconcerting, having to start over. He'll be off time. It flusters him so much he actually reads his printed agenda.

'I brought you something,' Merquise murmurs.

Duo glances up. 'What?'

Merquise takes a small silver packet from his coat pocket, extends it exactly halfway between their chairs. 'Gum,' he says.

So it is. Duo blinks at it. It's not a mirage, he's pretty sure. It feels solid when he takes it in cringing fingers.

'It's cinnamon,' he notes.

'I smelled it on your breath,' Merquise answers, eyes on the presentation up front.

There are multiple reasons in that statement to freak, ever so slightly. Like when Merquise was smelling him. Or why. Or if his breath smells that strongly. He slumps a little lower, and turns his head just enough to cup a hand over his mouth. He doesn't think it smells.

'Item Ten,' his supervisor says.

'I thought you didn't like it when I chew gum.'

'I don't believe I said anything of the sort.'

Wufei turns around again. Duo glares back. He'd been careful to whisper.

'Is there a problem, Agent Shadow?'

'No,' Duo says meekly.

'Please step into the hall for any personal conversations.'

If he sinks any lower, he'll melt through the floor. It's a tempting idea. 'Sorry, Ma'am.'

When the meeting ends, Merquise is on his feet and out the door so fast Duo can't even complain about being blamed for him talking, too.

 

**

 

They send out a new file plan over lunch. Duo saves it to his desktop and promptly forgets it exists.

He has a mission that runs all weekend. There are lists and lists of rules he must obey; he never remembers those, either. The lectures he gets afterward are inevitable, and it's inevitable he'll disappoint someone before he so much as launches. This time they're off to rescue the terrified staff of a research facility overtaken by a sect of White Fang who still turn up, armed to the teeth. He falls asleep in his suit while they're laying in wait to ambush the baddies. He earns actual demerits. On his permanent file. At ten, he gets Probation. It sounds so very dire he doesn't even ask what Probation entails.

But he saves a dozen lives. For whatever it's worth. Somehow, he thinks it's not worth as much to Preventers as it ought to be. But he's smart enough not to say that.

He hits snooze twice, that Monday.

 

**

 

He's losing at Minesweeper and drinking his third ginger ale of the morning. He has one hundred and twelve emails waiting for him, and three weeks' of forms that have sat ignored and unfiled. A letter from his supervisor sits atop the pile. She's concerned with his performance. She thinks he has commitment issues.

She's probably right. He feels adrift. Powered down, inert in Space.

The rap on his window wall scares the piss out of him. It's even scarier to see Merquise standing there, breaching his glass fort.

'What?' Duo asks.

Merquise nods to the right. To the door. Duo stares at him, honestly not comprehending. Merquise nods again. Numbly, he stands. He walks the corridor between the cubicles, exits his office into the hallway outside.

Merquise meets him there. He says, 'I see you're hard at work.'

Duo flushes. He rubs one hot ear. 'I'm... on break.'

'Of course,' Merquise says.

Duo waits. More does not seem to be forthcoming. 'So...'

'I would like to take you to lunch. I'll buy you a drink.'

'It's eleven twenty,' Duo says.

'If you'd rather wait for the end of the work day--'

'Uh, no. No. Uh--' They are, quite possibly, the only people who have ever stood still in Preventers. If anyone would look at him, they would have been gathering looks. 'I didn't think you liked me.'

'Why,' Merquise says.

Good question. 'History?'

Merquise doesn't have to say it's lame. Duo surrenders before it's even out of his mouth.

'Sure,' he sighs. 'Let me get my coat.'

 

**

 

The bar they go to is nearly forty minutes away from Preventers, and with that and the return trip, Duo's lunch break is more than gone, even if they don't take the time to eat. They'll probably throw him into the brig. He worries about it, chews his thumbnail to the quick, starts to object a dozen times-- before it occurs to him to wonder why he cares so much. There was a time when he didn't. He doesn't know how he changed so much, so fast.

The bar they go to is not only far away, it barely qualifies as a dive. Duo has paid his dues in places that barely qualify as toilets, but part of being salaried is supposed to be higher quality eats. His shoes stick to the floor. He's inclined to let the floor have them, and just run for it.

They sit in a booth on greasy plastic seats. Their waitress brings waters without straws, and Merquise orders them beers without asking Duo what he wants. He's allowed to decide on his own food, at least, and orders a chef salad. It seems safer than anything they might have to cook here.

'So,' Duo says.

Merquise folds his hands on the edge of their table. 'Thank you for coming.'

'Sure. Yeah.'

'You've been with Preventers for several months now.'

'Five. Six, almost. Close.'

'It strikes me that you've entered Preventers rather late in the game. I was unaware you were even interested in joining.'

'I wasn't,' Duo says. 'Une blackmailed me.'

Merquise makes a perfect white arch of his left eyebrow. 'Blackmail?'

'She interceded with the police on L2. She made a deal on my behalf.'

The right eyebrow joins the left.

'I stalked a guy,' Duo says. He wants his water, but the glass doesn't look clean. He rubs the rim with his cuff. 'I beat him up. And I hit his car.'

'With what.'

'A pipe. He was in it when I did it. He got a pretty good look at my face.'

Their beers arrive. In bottles, thankfully. Duo sips his. It's good, to his taste, dark and smoky. He's mildly surprised.

'Why did you stalk him?' Merquise asks, and drinks from his own bottle, swallow after swallow. There's a little less than half left when he puts it down, very precisely, on the coaster.

'He killed my friend.'

No more eyebrows to raise. Merquise's face is utterly still, instead. 'A murder.'

'No. I don't know. No.' It's him who can't look, now. He looks at his hands instead, curled around his bottle. 'He was her boyfriend. He was drink driving. They had an accident, she died.' He sips his beer again, wipes his mouth.

Merquise doesn't do the sorries game. Duo's grateful. It's not like anyone here knew Hilde. It's not like any of them actually care.

'Can I ask you something?' Duo says instead. 'Why we're here.'

'To eat,' Merquise says.

Duo doesn't know if that's a joke. 'I mean, I guess, why did you ask me.'

'It's been my intention to ask you for some time. Five months. Six, almost.'

'It's been your intention to take me out for a beer lunch for six months?'

'Something like that.'

The waitress brings their food. Duo's salad is about as he imagined, limp and browning. He douses it liberally with oil and vinegar. Merquise's bangers and mash are about as appetizing as something picked up in the park. Duo opens the plastic on his fork and knife. He rubs the serrated edge of the knife against his thumb.

'Something like that,' he echoes. 'So-- like a date?'

He doubts it, for a frozen second, when Merquise levels icy eyes at him. But maybe Merquise just always looks like that. He always has, whenever Duo's looked at him.

'Like a date,' Merquise agrees softly, and cuts his bangers into perfect eighths and eats them piece by piece.

'It's at least possible I'm not gay.'

He gets another glacial gaze. He shuts up, then.

They eat the rest of their meals in silence. Merquise says exactly three more words, to get them a second round of drinks. As dates go, it kind of sucks.

 

**

 

He microwaves a frozen lasagna and eats it only half defrosted, that night. His apartment is still nothing more than a blow-up mattress and the boxes he moved in with. He watches the news on his laptop, surfs for free porn and finds himself thinking about Merquise.

Merquise is very tall. And well-groomed.

He shuts off the laptop and goes to bed early.

 

**

 

He goes another week, another mission, another payday. The new recruits are done with training and are getting assigned with mentors to transition into their permanent posts. Duo acquires a boy half his age who doubles his workload. It takes intense juggling to figure out a way to keep his usual schedule of computer games in tact. He sets the boy to working his backlog of forms. The boy is so eager to help he doesn't seem to realise he's being duped. Duo doesn't have the heart to tell him.

The rap on the window makes him hit his head on the cupboard overhanging his desk. The recruit stares in shock and outrage into the hallway.

Merquise nods at the door.

Duo makes it there on one try, this time. He puts his hands in his pockets. 'Hi,' he tries.

Merquise ignores the niceties. 'I would like to take you to dinner today.'

That's a little surprising, given how it went when they tried lunch. Then again, maybe that's how Merquise spends all his meals.

And what the hell. It's not like he's doing anything else.

'Meet you in your office after work?' Duo says.

Merquise inclines his head. He turns on his heel and leaves.

The recruit is wide-eyed and suspicious, when he gets back. He says, 'Was that Agent Wind, sir?'

'Secret consult,' Duo answers. 'You didn't see anything.'

The boy gives him a startled blink, and goes back to penciling in supply orders.

 

**

 

Merquise's cubicle, Duo observes, is exactly the same as Duo's, except it looks like it was hit by a tornado.

'Not what I expected,' Duo says.

Merquise picks up his jacket from atop a pile of wrinkled faxes. 'Would you like to drive?'

'Sure. I'm low, though. I'll have to stop to fill up.'

'I meant, would you like to drive my car.'

'The Jag? Fuck yeah, I'd like to drive.'

Merquise puts the keys in his hand. By lifting Duo's palm with one hand and covering him with the other. His hands are very warm.

'Thanks,' Duo manages, suddenly dry-mouthed.

It's an amazing car. The paint is powder blue and the leather seats are creamy white. It purrs like a puma under his hand, it takes every curve with the precision of the finest mobile suit. It has seat warmers. Driving with a toasty butt is a new and drastically improved experience. Duo blows through three stop signs and tears up the country roads like a bat out of hell.

It's the first time since arriving on Earth that he even remotely enjoys himself.

Merquise lets it all go without a word, although he rolls his window up when the wind whips him into a shaggy white-topped afro. He fingers it tame as Duo drives wherever impulse takes him, in no particular rush to give up the excitement. But good manners do eventually reassert themselves, and out of consideration for being a guest in another man's car he reluctantly limits himself to a mere half hour of total road freedom. He pulls over by a scenic lake, and pats the steering wheel with regret as he parks.

'Done?' Merquise asks.

'Yeah.' He takes the keys out of the ignition, just to make sure, and dangles them out. 'Thanks. That was pretty great.'

'I don't think I've ever seen you grin like that.'

'Was I?' That embarrasses him, faintly. But only a little. Merquise must have known what he was offering. 'We can, uh, go to dinner now.'

'I meant--' Merquise takes the keys. His eyes are level on Duo's face. 'You've had the look of a prisoner, since you arrived.'

Back to that. The last of his exhilaration about the drive fades off. 'I could have gone to jail. I made a choice about it.'

'I understand that.'

'Yeah, well, repeat it back to me in the morning. Sometimes it's not so easy to remember.' He forces himself to smile, and can't hold it on. 'Sorry.'

'I meant--' Merquise releases a pent-up breath. 'I understand that, because I feel much the same way in my own situation.'

That's right. Merquise had been playing dead, after the Battle of Libra. Then there'd been the Barton Rebellion, and he'd reappeared to help save the day. But he'd traipsed off to Mars, hadn't he? Duo thinks he recalls hearing that from someone. 'Didn't work out?' he asks, vague enough to leave it open.

'Not in the way I expected,' Merquise says, and nothing more.

It's getting dark out. They're sitting in a dark car as it goes to night, and suddenly Duo just doesn't know what he's doing there anyway. Going to dinner, except they're not at dinner, are they, and even if they were it wouldn't make a lick more sense. They have nothing in common except the uniform they're wearing, and the admissions they've made about not wanting to wear it. That's not a relationship. That's not even a casual conversation over a beer.

'I'm sorry,' he says then, 'but I think maybe I should just put this out there. Why are we doing this? What's the end-goal? If this is a set-up for sex--'

'Would you object to that?'

'Jesus,' he says, because, well, no, faced with the idea, but still, Jesus. 'On what grounds? Not knowing who the hell you are? What you want from me? Or maybe just because this whole dance has been off and I'm not even sure--'

'What.'

'What exactly you see in me.'

They stare out the wind screen, after that. Merquise doesn't come up with any answers. It wasn't exactly a rhetorical question, but Duo can't even bring himself to be curious about it. It's a moot point. Whatever it was, he's probably ruined it now anyway. He's good at that. Preventers is good at that. You're supposed to give up all external things, when you commit yourselves to The Peace. Servants of the law don't have love lives. They don't have friends. They don't have reasons. Just rules.

He sits there thinking maybe he should have chosen the jail time.

Merquise sighs, then. 'Let's switch. I'll drive you home.'

They vacate the car. Duo walks around the back, Merquise the front. They resettle. Duo puts on his safety belt. Merquise turns the car on, and takes him home.

 

**

 

He joins the Recreation Committee and the Donated Sick Leave Committee, and gives his first report in the Tuesday meeting. His supervisor congratulates him on taking an interest at last, and he gets his first merit when he turns in all the paperwork the recruit did. The recruit moves on, to a cubicle on the other side of the building, five storeys up. Duo still sees him in the mornings in the parking garage, but after a week of sober nods, the kid starts to ignore him. Duo lets it drop.

He unpacks his boxes and makes a start at arranging his apartment. He puts pictures on the walls, retiles the bathroom, recaulks all the sinks. Buys sheets for his mattress.

He gets high marks on his next three team evaluations. He gets an offer to lead his own team. It's a good step. He does well, and knows he does well, and everyone else knows he does well, too, and now sometimes when they pass each other in the hall, his fellow Preventers will pause to incline their heads.

He stops chewing gum at work. His desk drawer is full of half-empty gum packets. Cinnamon. He takes up peppermints instead.

He cries himself to sleep one night, for the first time since he was a baby. It's not that he's sad. It's just-- he's not anything, anymore. He doesn't feel anything and he hates it. He doesn't even really feel that.

 

**

 

He's answering his email when the rap at the window startles him out of a deep thought. Merquise nods at the door.

He drags his feet a little, and Merquise is waiting for him when he gets to the hall. There's a woman at the water fountain. She moves on the very second she's done drinking, striding off with hard clacks of her boots.

Merquise says, 'Please take a walk with me.'

'I have reports,' Duo replies, but his stomach turns over, just like that. He presses a hand to it. 'All right.'

They walk the mile-long track that circles the building. It's cool, just on the edge of winter, and he shivers sometimes in his shirtsleeves, but it's not cold enough for his coat. Merquise looks as cold as marble, pacing next to him, and about as remote as art. They don't talk, for almost half of the trail.

Then Merquise says, 'I wanted to apologise for any discomfort I may have caused you, through my attentions.'

'No,' Duo says, not quite sure what he's answering. 'It's fine.'

'I would not have singled you out, had I realised earlier.'

'I said it's fine. It is.'

An impossibly faint frown makes a tiny crease at the sides of Merquise's mouth. Then it's gone. Duo wonders if he imagined it.

'You've been all right?' he asks.

'Yes,' Merquise says.

'I've been thinking,' Duo offers. 'That maybe it's not so bad here. I'm getting used to it. Joining the drone army. I guess it's like anything else. You fit in once you stop fighting.'

Merquise blows out a big breath, and stops him with an outstretched arm. They face each other on the path, out there under the clouds and weak sunlight. Merquise's hand grips his shoulder, tight, and then the other hand grips his chin.

'What I saw in you was someone who wouldn't give in to it,' Merquise says. 'What I admired was someone strong enough to see it for what it is, and loathe it as I do.'

He's a little shocked. A lot shocked, and so Merquise gets away with manhandling him, because it's a big concept to absorb. 'We do good work.'

'We did good works when we had passion for it. We did good works when our agents weren't pressganged into service. We did good works when what we did was preserve, not enforce.'

There's no epiphany of agreement. He knows already. He just doesn't know what to do about it. Nothing on the outside is going to change. No miracle window will open. There are no dreams, no opportunities to chase, not anymore.

He says, 'I thought maybe you wanted to date me. Stupid.'

Merquise blinks perfect eyelashes down at him. His hand loosens on Duo's jaw. 'I thought you didn't want that.'

'I want--' He wants to not be doing this now. He wants to go home and sleep off the rest of the day. He wants to go for a drive like that again, except without ever having to come back.

'I want something that doesn't have a single damn thing to do with Preventers,' he says. 'That's what I want. Think you can manage that?'

Merquise nods. Once. His lips are softer than Duo thinks they will be, ever so slightly parted and warm. Just a light, chaste press. It makes Duo's heart beat faster.

'I would like to take you out for dinner,' Merquise tells Duo.

'Yes,' Duo says. 'But all things being equal, I'd like to pick the venue this time.'

This time, the crinkle by Merquise's mouth might just be a smile.


End file.
